Harnwell

Dr. Nicholas Wright, welcome onto the show.

You have been an advisor to the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, I think, for over a decade.

You're an affiliate scholar at Georgetown, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Huge, huge academic CV.

And you've published this book with the title Warhead, how the brain shapes war and war shapes the brain.

And that basically thesis is, I think, to do the interplay between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex and the civil war, the neuron civil war between the two areas.

And that somehow makes us hard.

Well, I'm not a neuroscientist.

That's my simplification.

But how that somehow hardwires aggression and war on the natural stage when humans come together and act differently.

socially just in your own words in your words what explains us that this thesis and why it's important

So you have this tension between aggression and empathy, right?

I happen personally not to believe that mankind is the product of evolution.

I think we were created in a straightforward act of God, but put that to the side and we'll proceed in this conversation as if we are the products of evolution.

How is it that aggression would appear to have the upper hand

in evolutionary terms.

Why does aggression appear to have the upper hand between aggression and empathy?

First question.

And the second question is, looking at your insights, can you give me some practical pointers as to the contributions your research of the cutting edge of neuroscience could have in the public policy sphere?

There's a phenomenal amount to unpack there.